Meta has hard-capped historical data retention at 13 months. If you rely solely on in-platform reporting, you are flying blind. Learn why Signal Resilience is the primary responsibility of the 2026 Growth Team.
January 15, 2026
A critical, often overlooked update in the 2026 landscape is the restriction on historical data retention. The Ads Insights API now caps breakdowns for unique actions and hourly statistics at 13 months.
For the "Scaling Operator," this creates a blind spot. You can no longer rely on Meta's native interface to plan Q4 2026 based on granular Q4 2024 performance. The data simply isn't there.
The reliance on "Platform Truth" must be replaced by "Owned Truth." This requires the use of third-party data warehousing or marketing intelligence platforms to ingest and store daily performance data.
However, storage is useless if the input data is corrupted. This is where Signal Resilience becomes your primary KPI.
In a privacy-first environment, the browser pixel is losing ~30% of its data to ad blockers and privacy protocols. To survive, you must implement Server-Side Tracking (CAPI).
But implementation is not enough; you must audit the quality.
• The Metric: Event Match Quality (EMQ).
• The Standard: A Purchase EMQ score of 8.0 to 9.5 is required for efficient machine learning.
• The Risk: If your score is below 7.0, you are feeding the algorithm incomplete data, which leads to "Negative Reward Signals" and higher CPMs.
We have listed the specific customer parameters required to hit an EMQ of 9.0.
Download our technical standard to audit your data pipeline.
